I haven’t quite finished with all the stories about my family and Mom’s death.

A friend of mine – Karen Brandow – also lost her mother recently. In the eulogy, she included this story, which her mother had asked to have read at her funeral:

“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she is only a speck of cloud just where the sea and sky meet and mingle with each other. Then someone at my side exclaims, “There! She’s gone.”

Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all. She is just as large in hull and mast and spar as she was when she set sail, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And at the moment when we say, “She’s gone,” there are other eyes watching for her and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”